by Christie Purifoy | Dec 5, 2012 | Advent, Family, motherhood, Uncategorized, Waiting
We gathered around our advent wreath Sunday night.
The boys were too loud, and the baby needed to be fed halfway through, the three-year-old whined because we wouldn’t light all four candles, and then, of course, everyone fought over who would get to blow the candle out. But, the dining-room lights were low, and it was sort of beautiful, too.
We avoided wordy explanation and long prayers and passed out bread and grape juice instead (gluten-free for the big boy). My bread was a little stale, but, like I said, the lights were low, and it was all sort of beautiful.
If Advent is supposed to be a kind of journey, I wonder where we’ll be in a few more weeks. Will anything be different? Will I be any different?
It’s hard to imagine because my hormones are in new-baby upheaval and the boys I love so much are much too loud so I’m always yelling when I mean to be loving and the only change I can imagine is this:
We will sit together by the light of four candles instead of one.
The room we share will be just a little brighter.
My family may look its best in low light, but I still think this is what I want – this is the change I most desire.
A little more light to see by.
And the grace to love what it reveals.
What does Advent look like to you? Click here for the Advent flickr group hosted by our own photographer, Kelli Campbell.
Want to keep up with each post this Advent? Find There is a River on facebook here. You can subscribe or sign up to receive each post by email here.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 4, 2012 | Advent, Family, Jesus, motherhood, Uncategorized
It is dark, four children are finally quiet and in bed, and I am carrying a basket of folded laundry up the stairs.
I lift my head and see this: the tall double-hung window that presides over the turn in our staircase. The bottom is etched glass, and a battery-operated candle on the sill has filled it with one perfect rainbow. The top is clear glass, and a full moon hangs precisely at its center.
A full moon and a rainbow. I’ve heard the voice of God in signs like those.
I stop and listen, but I don’t hear that voice tonight.
Maybe I silenced it when I shouted at the boys? First, there was sword fighting with the curtain rods I had carefully placed in the corner (we’re in the middle of painting the family room). I couldn’t handle the noise, was worried the glass finials would break. Next, there was jumping from the couch, so I left them alone, yelled over my shoulder, “Someone will be crying soon!”
When the older boy started crying, I had no sympathy. Later, when I finally checked and saw the blood on his scalp, I somehow had even less.
Putting them to bed, I stepped on the baby Jesus, and I saw red. The baby Jesus from our wooden nativity set is sharp, and my foot hurt, but I saw red because I had told them, told them!, not to bring the Christmas decorations up into their room. It’s like a black hole in there, and I can’t take it anymore, and why did it have to be the baby Jesus accusing me with its painted-on-smile? Why not the donkey? I’d have had no problem throwing that donkey against the wall.
Lying in bed, I think about the full moon and the rainbow. I think about how silent they were. “Jesus, where are you??”
I hear these words in my head: Jesus was a little boy.
I tend to think of the incarnation and remember the baby. Or, the man. Never the little boy.
And the truth is, I don’t want to think about Jesus, the little boy. I don’t want to imagine Jesus jumping off the furniture. I don’t want to consider whether Jesus knew how to use his inside voice.
I want God to speak to me in rainbows and full moons. I want to see angels and follow stars.
I resist the thought that Jesus might be nearer than I think. Perhaps as near as the toddler bed down the hall where a little boy clutches a wooden Mary in one hand and a Lego astronaut in the other.
Too near.
by Christie Purifoy | Nov 27, 2012 | Advent, Blog, Jesus, motherhood, Seasons, Uncategorized, Waiting
As I write this, we are waiting for snow. I can hear rain on the metal roof of the red barn, but I am straining my ears for quiet. When the rain turns to snow (as the forecast promises it will), quietness will spread the news.
Silence heralds the advent of snow.
There were so many silent years between the words of Malachi and those of Matthew. I imagine the silence building until those who strained their ears, like Simeon and Anna in the temple, could hear the silence speak: He is coming. Hold on. He is coming.
I want to be like Anna.
I want to pray him in with my waiting.
My own season of intense waiting may have ended (with an old Pennsylvania farmhouse and a new baby girl), but I need Jesus more than ever.
I need his presence because, apart from him, this home is just a pile of old bricks crushing us with endless to-dos. Apart from him, there is no hope for me as a mother (the best and hardest thing my firstborn taught me, and it’s a lesson I learn again with each child, is I do not have what it takes).
I desperately need him for today (to give meaning to my dishwashing and the endless picking up of toys), and I need him for tomorrow (because, apart from him, my life has no destination; what am I walking toward?).
And so, this month, I will pause in the midst of online shopping and tree decorating. I will put down the toy catalog and the cookie cutter (which, let’s be honest, will be a relief. I could write a book on the horrors of holiday baking for the child allergic to butter, wheat, and nuts).
I will turn my face towards darkness and watch for light.
I will listen to silence.
I will pray him in with my waiting.
“… come quickly to me, O God. You are my help and my deliverer; Lord, do not delay.”
(Psalm 70:5)
You can read the introduction to last year’s Advent series here.
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by Christie Purifoy | Nov 26, 2012 | Advent, Family, God's Love, Grateful, motherhood, Pennsylvania, Poetry, Pregnancy, Uncategorized, Waiting
One year ago, I was waiting, holding on to these words from Psalm 81: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of Egypt. Open wide your mouth, and I will fill it.”
The date inked in beside those words in my Bible is August 23, 2011. By the time Advent began, I’d spent three months wringing out every drop of hope they had to give.
I did not know when (or even if) we would be moving on from Florida, but I longed to leave the desert behind. I was not yet pregnant, but I had a daughter who prayed every night for a sister. I had only imprecise dreams of what the future might hold, but I kept my mouth open and imagined a cup running over.
I wrote every day that Advent, and I shared it all with you here.
Before I’d even packed away the Christmas tree, I was pregnant, and the events which would bring us to Pennsylvania had been set in motion. I celebrated the new year with anticipation, though I still knew nothing of a baby girl or a red brick farmhouse.
Such a year it has been. Such a year.
And now – now, it is a season for singing. And, so, like last year, I will have something for you here each day of Advent.
We will wait and sing, together.
Magnificat
I am singing my Advent anthem to you, God: How all year
I’ve felt your thrusts, every sound and sight stabbing
like a little blade – the creak of gulls, the racket
as waves jostle pebbles, the road after rain, shining
like a river, the scrub of wind on the cheek, a flute
trilling – clean as a knife, the immeasurable chants of green,
of sky: messages, announcements. But of what? Who?
Then last Tuesday, a peacock feather (surprise!)
spoke from the grass; Flannery calls hers “a genuine
word of the Lord.” And I – as startled as Mary, nearly,
at your arrival in her chamber (the invisible
suddenly seen, urgent, iridescent, having put on light
for her regard) – I brim over like her, quickening. I can’t
stop singing, thoroughly pregnant with Word!
– Luci Shaw
by Christie Purifoy | Nov 19, 2012 | Family, motherhood, Poetry, Seasons, Uncategorized
My firstborn holds my fourth and all I can think is how much time gives us and how much it takes away.
I looked forward to autumn for ages, it seems, and now, suddenly, we have tipped over into frosts and bare trees. Is it any wonder, holding this tiny baby and reading this book to the nine-year-old, that I want to slow everything down? Time, itself, included?
Later, arms emptied by bedtime, I read “In Season.” Now I wonder, would I really see these two daughters, and in seeing, love them, if I weren’t prompted by the shifting season?
If the season were as endless as this poem’s tea-cup climate would I be content, like the tea-cup couple, to hold my family at arm’s length? To love them, but only in convenient ways?
In Season
The man and woman on the blue and white
mug we have owned for so long
we can hardly remember
where we got it
or how
are not young. They are out walking in
a cobalt dusk under the odd azure of
apple blossom,
going towards each other with hands outstretched.
Suddenly this evening, for the first time,
I wondered how will they find each other?
For so long they have been circling the small circumference
of an ironstone cup that they have forgotten,
if they ever really knew it, earth itself.
This top to bottom endlessly turning world
in which they only meet
each other meeting
each other
has no seasons, no intermission; and if
they do not know when light is rearranged
according to the usual celestial ordinance –
tides, stars, a less and later dusk –
and if they never noticed
the cotton edge of the curtains brightening earlier
on a spring morning after the clocks have changed
and changed again, it can only be
they have their own reasons, since
they have their own weather (a sudden fog,
tinted rain) which they have settled into
so that the kettle steam, the splash of new tea are
a sought-after climate endlessly folded
into a rinsed horizon.
– Eavan Boland
by Christie Purifoy | Nov 1, 2012 | Family, God's Love, motherhood, Pennsylvania, Scripture, Uncategorized
Only seven weeks old, and she’s seen her first hurricane. Actually, “heard” might be more accurate. I’m not sure any of us held her up to the window to watch the rain fall, but we were both awake to hear the wind in the night.
It was a wind to make you thank heaven for thick brick walls, even while you wondered if the storm windows would hold.
She breathes warmth and peace into the side of my neck, and I am newly determined: when storm clouds hover I will, like this baby girl, expect to be cared for.
I will practice hope.
I will assume Jesus meant it when he said we have no reason to worry.
When Hurricane Sandy threatened to cut off our power and water, I lined up baby bottles on my window ledge. They were filled to the brim with clean water. Then I went and filled a few more containers with water. And then, a few more. Possibly, a few more after that.
Does the Lord of the storm (Job 40:6) love me any less?
“Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he brought them out of their distress. He stilled the storm to a whisper; the waves of the sea were hushed.”
(Psalm 107: 28-29)
(photo by yours truly)
